by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Britain faces the threat of cyber attacks from hostile states and criminals, which could damage its critical infrastructure, warned the head of the country's electronic spying agency, The Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, warned recently.
In a rare public speech, Iain Lobban said Britain's infrastructure – such as power grids and emergency services – was at increased risk as the rapid growth of the Internet made systems more vulnerable.
"The threat is a real and credible one", he told an audience in London at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"We already provide expert advice and incident response to the operators of critical services.
"We must continue to strengthen these capabilities and be swifter in our response, aiming to match the speed at which cyber events happen."
Some 1,000 malicious emails each month were already being targeted at government computer networks, said Lobban, director of the GCHQ.
Britain's critical national infrastructure refers to services that are crucial to daily life. It includes mass communication, financial services, health and transport, such as railway and the Tube network. Not to be forgotten, I would say, must the national grid supplying electricity and also the gas distribution network. All of which is nowadays controlled by computers which, theoretically, could become the victim of attacks.
Lobban further warned Britain's economy could be at risk if effective protection against cyber attacks was not developed.
Putting such protection in place would help "the UK's continuing economic prosperity," he said.
"A knowledge economy needs to protect from exploitation the intellectual property at the heart of the creative and high-tech industry sectors."
The director conceded his comments came as ministers weighed their "spending priorities" – the coalition government is poised to give full details of sweeping cuts to defense and public sector spending next week.
But the risk of cyber attack was not "solely a national security or defense issue," he argued.
"It goes right to the heart of our economic well-being and national interest."
GCHQ is one of Britain's intelligence and security agencies, alongside domestic intelligence service MI5 and foreign intelligence agency MI6.
GCHQ is more often associated with electronic intelligence-gathering but Lobban was keen to stress its role in protecting vital computer networks.
What no one seems to be looking at though, it would appear, is yet another threat and one that is equally real, and that is the treat of an EMP device and it does not even have to be deployed by means of a bomb.
There are other sources, however, that claim that Mr. Lobban went complete,ly over the top with his assessment, or his agency did, and that the threat is nowhere as serious as made out by the powers that be.
It is, obviously, possible, as with so many other claims, that this is just aimed at softening up the people in accepting still more controls and possible email checks and other censorship, etc. on the Internet.
The one thing the powers that be are afraid of in our age is not, in reality, cyber attacks, for the can be guarded against, with the right tools and people, but the fact that the Internet gives the public a tool that they cannot control well enough, as far as they are concerned.
So, I guess we should take those warnings, as so many others, with a good pinch of salt and ask the “quo bono?”, the “who benefits?”, question.
Who benefits from scare stories of this sort? Only the powers that be in that they get the people to accept more and more control measures, whether in the real or the virtual world.
Not more controls of the Internet or such are required but a different, already tried and tested, technology is required, namely one not, necessarily, done with computers. One that is, therefore, not susceptible to cyber attacks.
Yes, that will require more people actually doing some work, pulling switches, manning radio rooms, conveying messages by communications relay and even runners, and such.
Some of the more simple technology is what is required to protect the vital infrastructure. Technology that cannot be attacked with the click of a mouse but would require some real serious measures that could easily be guarded against.
The powers that be try to blame everything now on the openness of the Internet, on a lack of control in that realm, and such like, but have no idea that the answer as to how to overcome the threat lies right in front of them in history in the form of tested and proven analog technology such as ordinary radios, with scramblers, on VHF and HF, and other such like, as well as hand-operated switching systems in power stations, etc. It is not rocket science. In fact is it rather primitive science and it works.
What is needed is a serious reality check and to leave the Net alone and not to use it for serious critical infrastructure and communications, at least not as the primary channel.
Let's not try to put more and more draconian measures in place against the freedom of the public but let's rethink how we apply and employ technology.
© 2010
